water carefully with the other. I did not know that the sobbing voice-'I'm sorry! I'm sorry!' — was mine until the water stopped and I realized my mouth was moving and the words were still coming out.
Papa put the kettle down, wiped at his eyes. I stood in the scalding tub; I was too scared to move-the skin of my feet would peel off if I tried to step out of the tub. Papa put his hands under my arms to carry me out, but I heard Mama say, 'Let me, please.' I did not realize that Mama had come into the bathroom. Tears were running down her face. Her nose was running, too, and I wondered if she would wipe it before it got to her mouth, before she would have to taste it. She mixed salt with cold water and gently plastered the gritty mixture onto my feet. She helped me out of the tub, made to carry me on her back to my room, but I shook my head. She was too small. We might both fall.
Mama did not speak until we were in my room. 'You should take Panadol,' she said. I nodded and let her give me the tablets, although I knew they would do little for my feet, now throbbing to a steady, searing pulse.
'Did you go to Jaja's room?' I asked, and Mama nodded. She did not tell me about him, and I did not ask.
'The skin of my feet will be bloated tomorrow,' I said.
'Your feet will be healed in time for school,' Mama said.
After Mama left, I stared at the closed door, at the smooth surface, and thought about the doors in Nsukka and their peeling blue paint. I thought about Father Amadi's musical voice, about the wide gap that showed between Amaka s teeth when she laughed, about Aunty Ifeoma stirring stew at her kerosene stove. I thought about Obiora pushing his glasses up his nose and Chima curled up on the sofa, fast asleep.
I got up and hobbled over to get the painting of Papa-Nnukwu from my bag. It was still in the black wrapping. Even though it was in an obscure side pocket of my bag, I was too scared to unwrap it. Papa would know, somehow. He would smell the painting in his house. I ran my finger along the plastic wrapping, over the slight ridges of paint that melded into the lean form of Papa-Nnukwu, the relaxed fold of arms, the long legs stretched out in front of him.
I had just hobbled back to my bed when Papa opened the door and came in. He knew. I wanted to shift and rearrange myself on the bed, as if that would hide what I had just done. I wanted to search his eyes to know what he knew, how he had found out about the painting. But I did not, could not. Fear. I was familiar with fear, yet each time I felt it, it was never the same as the other times, as though it came in different flavors and colors.
'Everything I do for you, I do for your own good,' Papa said. 'You know that?'
'Yes, Papa.' I still was not sure if he knew about the painting. He sat on my bed and held my hand. 'I committed a sin against my own body once,' he said. 'And the good father, the one I lived with while I went to St. Gregory's, came in and saw me. He asked me to boil water for tea. He poured the water in a bowl and soaked my hands in it.'
Papa was looking right into my eyes. I did not know he had committed any sins, that he could commit any sins. 'I never sinned against my own body again. The good father did that for my own good,' he said.
After Papa left, I did not think about his hands soaked in hot water for tea, the skin peeling off, his face set in tight lines of pain. Instead I thought about the painting of Papa-Nnukwu in my bag.
I did not get a chance to tell Jaja about the painting until the next day, a Saturday, when he came into my room during study time. He wore thick socks and placed his feet gingerly one after the other, as I did. But we did not talk about our padded feet. After he felt the painting with his finger, he said he had something to show me, too. We went downstairs to the kitchen. It was wrapped in black cellophane paper, as well, and he had lodged it in the refrigerator, beneath bottles of Fanta. When he saw my puzzled look, he said they weren't just sticks; they were stalks of purple hibiscus. He would give them to the gardener. It was still harmattan and the earth was thirsty, but Aunty Ifeoma said the stalks might take root and grow if they were watered regularly, that hibiscuses didn't like too much water, but they didn't like to be too dry, either.
Jaja's eyes shone as he talked about the hibiscuses, as he held them out so I could touch the cold, moist sticks. He had told Papa about them, yet he quickly put them back into the fridge when we heard Papa coming.
Lunch was yam porridge, the smell wafting around the house even before we went to the dining table. It smelled good-pieces of dried fish drifting in yellow sauce alongside the greens and cubed yams. After prayers, as Mama dished out the food, Papa said, 'These pagan funerals are expensive. One fetish group will ask for a cow, then a witch doctor will demand a goat for some god of stone, then another cow for the hamlet and another for the umuada. Nobody ever asks why the so-called gods don't ever eat the animals and instead greedy men share the meat among themselves. The death of a person is just an excuse for heathens to feast.'
I wondered why Papa was saying this, what had prompted him. The rest of us remained silent while Mama finished dishing out the food.
'I sent Ifeoma money for the funeral. I gave her all she needed,' Papa said. After a pause, he added, 'For nna anyi's funeral.'
'Thanks be to God,' Mama said, and Jaja and I repeated her.
Sisi came in before we finished lunch to tell Papa that Ade Coker was at the gate with another man. Adamu had asked them to wait at the gate; he always did that when people visited during weekend meal times. I expected Papa to ask them to wait on the patio until we finished lunch, but he told Sisi to have Adamu let them in and to open the front door. He said the prayer after meals while we still had food on our plates and then asked us to keep eating, he would be right back.
The guests came in and sat down in the living room. I could not see them from the dining table, but while I ate, I tried hard to make out what they were saying. I knew Jaja was listening, too. I saw the way his head was slightly tilted, his eyes focused on the empty space in front of him. They were talking in low tones, but it was easy to make out the name Nwankiti Ogechi, especially when Ade Coker spoke, because he did not lower his voice as much as Papa and the other man did. He was saying that Big Oga's assistant-Ade Coker referred to the head of state as Big Oga even in his editorials-had called to say that Big Oga was willing to give him an exclusive interview. 'But they want me to cancel the Nwankiti Ogechi story. Imagine the stupid man, he said they knew some useless people had told me stories that I planned to use in my piece and that the stories were lies…'
I heard Papa interrupt in a low voice, and the other man added something afterward, something about the Big People in Abuja not wanting such a story out now that the Commonwealth Nations were meeting. 'You know what this means? My sources were right. They have really wasted Nwankiti Ogechi,' Ade Coker said. 'Why didn't they care when I did the last story about him? Why do they care now?'
I knew what story Ade was referring to, since it was in the Standard about six weeks ago, right around the time Nwankiti Ogechi first disappeared without a trace. I remembered the huge black question mark above the caption 'Where is Nwankiti?' And I remembered that the article was full of worried quotes from his family and colleagues. It was nothing like the first Standard feature I'd read about him, titled 'A Saint among Us,' which had focused on his activism, on his pro-democracy rallies that filled the stadium at Surulere.
'I am telling Ade we should wait, sir,' the other guest was saying. 'Let him do the interview with Big Oga. We can do the Nwankiti Ogechi story later.'
'No way!' Ade burst out, and if I had not known that slightly shrill voice, it would have been hard for me to imagine the round, laughing Ade sounding that way, so angry. 'They don't want Nwankiti Ogechi to become an issue now. Simple! And you know what it means, it means they have wasted him! Which one is for Big Oga to try and bribe me with an interview? I ask you, eh, which one is that?'
Papa cut him short then, but I could not hear much of what he said, because he spoke in low, soothing tones, as though he were calming Ade down. The next thing I heard him say was, 'Come, let us go to my study. My children are eating.'
They walked past us on their way upstairs. Ade smiled as he greeted us, but it was a strained smile. 'Can I come and finish the food for you?' he teased me, making a mock attempt to swoop down on my food.
After lunch, as I sat in my room, studying, I tried hard to hear what Papa and Ade Coker were saying in the study. But I couldn't. Jaja walked past the study a few times, but when I looked at him, he shook his head-he could hear nothing through the closed door, either.
It was that evening, before dinner, that the government agents came, the men in black who yanked hibiscuses off as they left, the men Jaja said had come to bribe Papa with a truckful of dollars, the men Papa asked to get out of our house.
When we got the next edition of the Standard, I knew it would have Nwankiti Ogechi on its cover. The story was detailed, angry, full of quotes from someone called The Source. Soldiers shot Nwankiti Ogechi in a bush in
